Hasen runs an online meeting hall for all the would-be speech totalitarians. They post, bluster, and kibitz about the latest news on their effort to erode the First Amendment and increase federal power. Whenever a free speech advocate seeks to contribute to the conversation at the blog, they are often deliberately given a cold shoulder and ignored, per plan. The ignored don’t understand that leftists aren’t interested in debate. Their pedigree requires the eradication of opposing ideas, not their incubation.

But perhaps the ignored should be thankful. Being ignored is better than what the speech regulators have done in other places throughout history. Jail and truncheons are the usual tools of those who want to stamp out free speech. In America, the speech regulators have just begun to warm up to jail as a tool.

That Hasen’s online hangout is hosted on government servers provides an interesting twist.

Judicial Watch sent the University of California at Irvine a freedom of information request demanding Hasen’s emails to the White House and other government officials including any on the topic of speech regulations. The University told Judicial Watch to pound sand, and still hasn’t provided anything.

So who are some of the other speech regulators who haven’t shown up on IRS scandal documents yet?

One of the top speech regulators is former White House counsel and Obama campaign lawyer Bob Bauer. As I noted at PJ Media:

Robert Bauer had the motive to direct IRS policy against Tea Party groups. He is a longtime opponent of First Amendment freedoms and an advocate of government-speech regulation. He also can’t stand the work the Tea Party is conducting to monitor and eradicate voter fraud, work the Republican Party and national campaigns have utterly failed to perform.

During the 2008 election, while representing the Obama campaign, Bauer sent a threatening letter to the Justice Department demanding criminal investigations of people who had the audacity to speak about voter fraud. Bauer even singled out Sarah Palin in the letter. Anyone who “developed or disseminated” information about voter fraud, to Bauer, deserved the heavy boot of a criminal investigation. Read the letter; it reveals a nasty, thuggish, and lawless attitude toward political opposition.

There’s that jail thing again. They just can’t resist that totalitarian impulse against political opponents.

Other campaigns have had speech regulator attorneys — even Republicans. Trevor Potter was John McCain’s head lawyer in 2008, and he founded the now Soros-funded Campaign Legal Center. He helped cook up the McCain-Feingold speech regulations.

Scads of well-funded groups also exist to stamp down free speech, groups like Common Cause and Demos.

The new, more sinister IRS scandal is deadly dangerous to Democrats. It isn’t dangerous because bureaucrats took too long to approve tax exemption applications. It’s dangerous because it reveals the authoritarian impulses of powerful Democrats. First they tried to shut up political opposition through threats and bureaucracy. Then we learn yesterday that Democrats and leftists at the Justice Department, the United States Senate, and the Internal Revenue Service were discussing jailing political opponents.

Just wait until the American people learn more about the modern American version of history’s speech regulators.

I hope your faith in the American public when they learn more about this is well founded. I'm not optimistic about it. I think a majority of them are too lazy, too brainwashed or too hopelessly committed to the leftist project to care or act. I would love to be wrong.

This represents nothing less than an attempted coup against the Constitution by members of a recognized political party's operatives within the government. W.T.F. These people were conspiring to put Americans in jail because...because... they didn't like their politics? Good Christ where is Boehner and a select commitee. Oh right, now I remember, his ranking minority co-chair is part of it. God if only Trey Gowdy was the independent prosecutor. I swear to God he, Gowdy, figured it out from the start, but is stuck in a no seniority position of impotence.

"But perhaps the ignored should be thankful. Being ignored is better than what the speech regulators have done in other places throughout history."

Since 2008, Obama and other political figures have dropped many hints and made many statements that gave clear indication of their intentions toward this nation. Only the more astute and observant recognized it during that initial stage. Now that there is a definitive track record of fraud and corruption, it's plain to see that this was all planned and pre-conceived when we look at the pattern of manipulative communication and coded statements that exhibit every characteristic of totalitarianism and communism. "Not a smidgen of corruption"... says Obama with roughly a million or so armed federal agents in various departments who "have his back." Who needs street gangs, when they might as well flash each other their signs in the capitol.

We are no longer FREE..None of us!....No rule of law! No Constitution...No Bill of Rights! It's now dangerous to be American! They will attempt to destroy you if you have a different path or view. I ask of you? When they come after you! What will you do?...

"Whenever a free speech advocate seeks to contribute to the conversation at the blog, they are often deliberately given a cold shoulder and ignored, per plan. "

"Whenever... often" This sentence doesn't make sense.

What possible evidence could you have that this is a plan? It sounds like you make comments and nobody reads them or bothers to respond. That's what happens to 99% of comments anybody makes on *any* blog. Including my comment here, I expect!

"Judicial Watch sent the University of California at Irvine a freedom of information request demanding Hasen’s emails to the White House and other government officials including any on the topic of speech regulations. The University told Judicial Watch to pound sand, and still hasn’t provided anything." What will judicial watch think if a liberal group asks universities to hunt down all the political emails of its conservative professors? I'm one of those, so I feel threatened myself. And since when have the emails of a single employee with no authority to act for teh university on a subject been subject to FOIA requests?

“Bob was a critical member of the White House team,” Mr. Obama said. “He has exceptional judgment, wisdom and intellect, and he will continue to be one of my close advisers.” Source, Robert Bauer's Wikipedia page.

Not on-topic, but could the author comment on the fact that the Attorney General of the United States attending what was basically a Klan rally, with the pogrom slogan "no Justice, no Peace" emblazoned behind him? Al Sharpton has more racist blood on his hands than any KKK or Nazi in the past forty years, the KC shooter included.Hank Aaron was right. They have exchanged their hoods for suits.

This is Watergate and the corruption of lawyers and the DOJ all over again. People forget that Nixon was a dangerous man, and why. He struck at the rule of law, and today it's far worse since the politically correct assail the fundamental logic behind the rule of law by stipulating Orwellian gibberish such as "racism is outcomes, not intentions." The PC shore that up by further stating says one needn't be a criminal to be a criminal (privilege), while acting the criminal (reverse racism) is a form of innocence.

When one defending justice uses the phrase "'sexist/racist/homophobe'" to always only mean a male, white, and heterosexual mechanism in play, one is already so intellectually corrupt there is no hope of reaching such a mind, or culture.

Why would anyone be surprised such a culture has no use for law or argument and cherry-picks our Constitution like a tree with ripe and rotten fruit? When one does that one is choosing to worship identity over principle. No democracy based on a Constitution and dispassionate rule of law can survive all those things when they are institutionalized. There is no law - only rule.